The Home of Australian Craft Beer

4 Pines Brewery

Chances are, the team at 4 Pines weren't the first Australians to check out their local bars only to conclude there wasn't a single good beer to be found in any of them. Equally, the chances are very few have decided to do something about it by opening a venue and brewing their own. Mostly Western Australian in origin and starved of the quality beer they'd become used to in WA, where the Aussie craft beer revolution started, that's exactly what they did.

The result of their enterprise is 4 Pines, which started out as brewery, bar and restaurant overlooking the Manly ferry terminal and, particularly since the opening of an ever-expanding 50 hectolitre (ie big) brewery in Brookvale, is playing a key role in turning Sydneysiders (and much of Australia) onto better beer. Opened in the middle of 2008 when there wasn't an Aussie craft beer to be found anywhere in the suburb, it rapidly earned a reputation for brewing a quality drop. They started out with four core beers - Kolsch, Pale, Hefeweizen and ESB - but have expanded to a point where those are now complemented by 15 to 20 seasonals and specialty batches every year plus the world's first ever beer designed for consumption in space, their 4 Pines "Vostok Space Beer" Stout - www.vostokspacebeer.com .

The opening of their offsite brewery in Brookvale, which is engulfing its surrounding industrial estate like The Blob, has allowed them to share the love and send more beer outside the local community; even so, demand has grown so fast they've had to meet it with outsourced brewing, although work is underway to bring it all back home. The beers themselves have won as many plaudits as thirsty fans, with the Stout winning Best Stout in the world at a past Australian International Beer Awards, the ESB collecting Champion Pale Ale in the busiest category of the inaugural Craft Beer Awards and the brewery itself bringing home Champion Large Brewery titles at both the Craft Beer Awards and Australian International Beer Awards.

Aside from the beer, the 4 Pines kitchen in Manly keeps many locals come back multiple times a week. From an eye fillet steak, to their famous chunky chips the menu covers all bases, while the mega burger and signature beef pie are the stuff of local legend, The venue also hosts live music every Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday. You'll even find a magician wandering between the tables on Thursdays in what could be an Aussie brewery first, plus special beer nights and themed beer events and festivals, all of which you can keep up to date with by joining their beer club.

You can now join them at the Brookvale site too. They opened a 21-tap Brookvale Truck Bar alongside the brewery, huge space purpose built for enjoying the freshest beer possible while standing in the inner sanctum of a working brewery. Built into a 1960 Dodge truck, the taps pour the 4 Pines core range, a rotating showcase of small batch ‘Keller Door’ beers plus a couple of wines for the yet to be converted.

Here's hoping more Australians who can't find good beer at their local follow the 4 Pines example.

The Regulars

Tapped Thu Dec 3 2015

You need only keep a loose eye on the news to come to a conclusion that the climate is pretty buggered. Melting ice sheets, floods, fires, violent tempest; it’s all a bit grim really. And the unfortunate thing is there’s probably not a lot the average person can do about it. So, we look for positives: those wonderful moments between cataclysmic events where the world is just so gloriously habitable for humans that you stop worrying about the forthcoming plague of locusts. One such lovely occasion ···
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Way back at the first ever GABS - back when the "A" stood for Australian not Australasian, there were 20 not 89 beers, and it took place at The Local Taphouses not the Royal Exhibition Building - among the crazy high ABV beers and hop bombs one of the standouts was 4 Pines' Wee Heavy: a multi-layered, luscious malty treat. It was like a step up from their ESB, and now that ESB - which itself seems to have become beefier since - has been released in chunky 500ml bottles to complement the ···
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The 4 Pines Kolsch helped garner a little attention for the brewery in 2010 when it picked up gold at the 2010 Sydney Royal Show, one of the toughest judged beer competitions in Australia. Light straw in colour, with aromas of lemon and lime and a light malty palate, it finishes crisp and clean and is a good beer for winning over the uninitiated to the craft beer cause. ···
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A beer crammed with four varieties of American hop and a hefty malt bill that results in a deep amber beer with a touch of ruby. The hops give you aromas of pine and grapefruit before the malt gives way to a solid bitter finish. ···
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An Extra Special Bitter that's true to the beer's British origins, this gold medallist from the 2010 Australian International Beer Awards is a mouth-filling, full-flavoured malty treat of a beer. Deep copper in colour with some floral, earthy hints on the nose, the ale yeast offers up some nice fruit flavours before the malts take over in the form of coffee and caramel. Oh, and there's plenty of bitterness at the end - it is an Extra Special Bitter, after all. ···
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A beer that takes its inspiration from the style that was born in Bavaria in South Germany, but creates a version using only Kiwi hops. It pours a cloudy pale straw, has a mildly sweet nose with a touch of banana and a rounded palate of both banana and typical hefe yeast spiciness. ···
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The beer that is being developed as the world's first "space beer", the 4 Pines Stout is made in the dry Irish style and made with a seven-strong malt lineup. Nigh on black with a tan head, it gives off coffee, chocolate and caramel on the nose, characteristics that come through on the palate too, along with a smooth finishing bitterness. ···
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Black

Style

Irish Stout

Strength

5.1%

The Specials

Tapped Fri Nov 25 2016

Another multi-pack with the festive season very much in mind is on shelves as we head into Summer. 4 Pines tends to put together such things with regularity and, this time around, has done so with a mixture of regular releases and a couple of past limited releases.
In the regular column (presumably for "Before Christmas" when you're easing your way into the day) are its two biggest sellers, the Kolsch and Pale Ale, about which we need to say nothing. We'd hazard a guess that the During ···
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Tapped Tue Oct 11 2016

4 Pines has been enjoying plundering its hop supplies for most of the recent Keller Door releases. And it seems they have little intention of stopping. That said, while this one comes with "Hoppy" in the title, it's not loaded up to the same degree as recent IPAs or the Cascadian Dark Ale. But, given doppelbocks [German strong, malty lagers] traditionally put malts front and centre (check out Stone & Wood and Willie Simpson's recent Forefathers release for a fine local example), it ···
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Tapped Thu Jul 21 2016

4 Pines seems to have hit a steady groove with its bottled Keller Door releases. For the most part, they’re clocking in around the 8 percent ABV mark, they’re frequently loaded up with hops and they’re lapped up by drinkers across the country. And now, on the back of various IPA variants, comes another hop heavy, hefty beast.
Cascadian dark ales are beers that exist on the spectrum not too far from the space where black IPAs operate, originating in the Pacific Northwest and taking their name ···
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Tapped Wed Jun 15 2016

The seventh addition to 4 Pines’ core stable of beers is one that’s been around before, albeit in a few different guises. It started out in 2013 as a small batch of real ale at the Manly brewpub, released under the name Autumn Amber Ale. It won a lot of fans which encouraged the brewers to make it again the following year, only this time it was called Amber Mosaic and it got released in bottles – the first Keller Door beer to get the privilege. In 2015 it came back again as a short run release ···
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Tapped Wed May 25 2016

You could have had plenty of fun with Tarantino beer tie-ins. There's the obvious: Jackie Brown Ale. The slightly reaching: Reservoir Bock or Kill Pils. And the please-get-to-the-point-of-this-article: Django Unfiltered or Inglourious Kvassterds. Still, on these shores at least, it's taken until his current release, The Hateful Eight, for one of his films to receive a brewed accompaniment.
The accompaniment to the Blu-ray and DVD release of the violent Western vengeance flick comes from Sydney's ···
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Tapped Fri May 6 2016

Last year, 4 Pines released its first Keller Door mixed pack, The Bastard Children of the British Empire. Across six beers, the brewery offered drinkers the evolution of the pale ale from its origins in the UK to the various forms found today. And now they're back with another pack that mixes education with enjoyment, as well as offering the brewers a chance to play around with four more beer styles.
The Black Box of Dark Ales features four different brews of a darker hue complete with a potted history ···
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Black

Style

Dark Ales

Strength

Various

Bitterness

Various

Stockists

Available in suitably moody packaging at good beer stockists across the country

Tapped Tue Feb 16 2016

The days when 4 Pines would use its occasional bottled Keller Door releases to give drinkers something a little different but not particularly wild to try would appear to be long gone. Where once there was Marzen and Amber Mosaic, last year saw the bigger, frequently hoppier, likes of the Citrus IPA, West Coast Red Rye IPA and barrel aged Baltic Porter take centre stage.
Now they're opening their 2016 account with the biggest and hoppiest Keller Door to date, the 9 percent Imperial IPA. Looks wise ···
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Tapped Tue Nov 3 2015

Talk to someone who’s grown up in Europe and they’ll no doubt be able to regale you with some of the oddities that come with spending the end of year festive season Down Under; instead of a white Christmas there’s scorching sunshine; instead of building snowmen people build sandcastles; instead of roasting chestnuts on an open fire you grill prawns on a BBQ. These sort of material differences lend themselves to the idea that traditional Christmas ales – those of the strong and spice-infused ···
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Tapped Wed Sep 23 2015

The "fresh is best" concept is something that’s increasingly come to the fore in the beer world as more drinkers grasp the general idea that, at least as far as hop forward beers are concerned, the sooner you drink a beer the better, and more as the brewer intended, it should be. Much of that, of course, depends on how quickly the brewer can get a finished beer out of their fermentation tank and into your mouth via distributors, bottles stores and bars. For the last couple of Keller Door ···
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Tapped Thu Jul 9 2015

4 Pines’ Oaked Baltic Porter is the first bottled Keller Door release to come from the Brookvale brewery since they took out the title of Champion Large Australian Brewery at the 2015 Australian International Beer Awards. Except, it sort of isn’t. You see, the beer itself was actually brewed at the tail end of 2014 and a portion of it had been sitting in Lark Distillery whisky barrels since December. Now, blended back together, the two parts deliver a suitably warming winter brew.
At 7.5 percent ···
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Tapped Mon Mar 30 2015

One can never accuse the crew at 4 Pines of lacking ambition. They've rapidly grown to become one of the biggest craft breweries in Australia and have managed their growing pains so well their beers continue to win trophies, all while maintaining a sense of joy and mischief. And now they've released their most ambitious Keller Door release to date. Not content with releasing one new beer, they've conjured five that are being sold in eye-catching, no-expense-spared six-packs following their launch ···
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Golden

Style

Pale Ales

Strength

Various

Bitterness

Various

Stockists

And at select venues on draught and widely in mixed 500ml bottle six-packs

Tapped Thu Jan 22 2015

Thanks to the hop growers of the Pacific Northwest and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, the contemporary beer world is awash with tasty beers in which citrus characteristics are prominent as all hell. So the team at 4 Pines – whose existing Pale Ale is one that has plenty of a citrus bent going on – has decided to attempt to enhance the characteristics typically obtained from hops by using actual citrus fruit in its latest Keller Door limited release brew.
The Citrus IPA continues to follow the path trodden ···
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Tapped Mon Aug 18 2014

Up until now, Sydney's 4 Pines has tended to use its occasional bottled Keller Door releases to showcase beers a little different from their core range without straying too far from the 4 Pines path. There have been single hop IPAs, an Oktoberfest lager and a hoppy amber. But, for their latest, there's been something of a change of tack, one that has essentially seen things ratcheted up several notches. And when we say "things" we mean hops, malt and booze content. The Imperial Brown Ale ···
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Tapped Tue Apr 29 2014

The team at Manly's 4 Pines is back with another seasonal release in 500ml bottles. And, as with those that have come before, they continue to eschew the path trodden by many local brewers when it comes to seasonal releases ' in other words, go nuts ' in favour of releasing rather more approachable affairs. Following in the footsteps of the likes of their Oktoberfest lager and the recent Calypso comes the Amber Mosaic. It is a beer that has seen the light of day on tap before and is now enjoying ···
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Tapped Tue Mar 11 2014

Of all the Keller Door series undertaken by Manley's 4 Pines, the Single Hop Series has been the most prolific, resulting in a broad spectrum of beers showcasing different hops from around the globe. The concept is simple: to the same base beer is added a different hop variety so that drinkers can discover just what it does to a beer. The Calypso is something of a rarity in the series given it has gone beyond being a limited run tap beer and made it into 500ml bottles that will be available relatively ···
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Tapped Mon Oct 7 2013

There's a line in the Sh!t Beer Geeks Say! video from Good Beer Week 2013 in which one of the geeks comments that a brewery's beer isn't the same since they increased capacity. It's probably the kind of thing that will have crossed the minds of one or two as 4 Pines went from a Manly brewpub knocking out all its beers on an in-house 500 litre system to owners of a 5,000 offsite brewery - via a few contract brews of its big sellers. It's a thought that is diminished pretty much any time you drink ···
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Tapped Thu Jul 4 2013

They love celebrating the nations of the world at 4 Pines. Give them a country marking an occasion of significance and they'll give you a new beer; sometimes four. Once again they've used Independence Day as an excuse to head to the brewery armed with tonnes of hops to create a series of US-inspired ales. It's the fourth time they've marked Independence Day in such a manner, with this year's beers the 10th, 11th and 12th Yankee beers.
As brewery owner Jaron tells us: "This occasion is perfect ···
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Tapped Sun Mar 24 2013

Inspiration for a new 4 Pines beer can apparently come from many different sources. It can, like their stout - the 'Certified Space Beer' - spend years in continual development and involve aeronautical engineers and zero-gravity flights. Others, like this one, have a rather more straightforward genesis. The story goes that 4 Pines brewers Andrew Tweddell and Chris Willcock were chatting with the bar supervisor, Chris Moore, when the conversation turned along the lines of:
Chris W: We need to brew ···
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Tapped Thu Mar 14 2013

Despite having a flash new brewery in Brookvale, the brewing team at 4 Pines are making sure they still get time to play with the old set-up back in Manly by continuing to knock out their Keller Door releases. This latest release coincides with St Patrick's Day - surely of of the stoutiest times of the year - and the St Pat's Stout series. Where last year they served up four new stouts, this time they've gone for just the two; one big and one small. The small one is a Milk Stout which, at just 4.3 ···
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Tapped Thu Feb 7 2013

The first Keller Door release from 4 Pines for 2013 is a new incarnation of 2012's popular Single Hop Series. The concept of the Single Hop Series is for the brewers to make the exact same beer several times over, with the only difference to the recipe being the variety of hop that's added. This year there are three beers on show, made with a malt bill consisting of 95% Ale malt, 4% Wheat and 1% Crystal malt. The hop varieties are Centennial from the USA, Hallertau Mittlefruh from Germany and Target ···
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Tapped Wed Dec 19 2012

There's something undeniably comforting about a winter Christmas: the glow of an open fire, snow outside the window and a warming festive ale in hand. But in Australia - where Christmas is generally spent increasing one's quota of sun, sand and surf - the last thing on most people's wish list is a strong dark spiced ale. What would be far more suited to the climate is something like a Summer Saison, and that's exactly what 4 Pines have delivered in time for Christmas 2012. This 'highly sessionableâ? ···
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Tapped Fri Nov 30 2012

We seem to recall that, back in the depths of time when GABS was merely the Great Australian Beer Spectapular held at the Local Taphouses rather than the behemoth that now bestrides the Royal Exhibition Building, one of the highlights was a rich, multi-layered malty number from 4 Pines going by the name Wee Heavy. So this, we assume, can be taken as some sort of relation of said beer. Its big, musclebound older brother perhaps, as while we remember the previous one rocking in at around seven per ···
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Tapped Fri Mar 16 2012

The second in the 4 Pines series of multiple releases sees them switch from showcasing hops to showcasing rather darker beers. In tribute to St Patrick's Day, Keller Door 2 sees them unveiling a Dry Irish Stout (which is also pouring on the hand pump at their Manly venues) alongside an Oatmeal Stout, Choc Orange Stout and Russian Imperial Stout. The beers have been tapped at Manly to kickstart their Paddy's Day Weekend festivities, while others are currently winging their way around the country's ···
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Tapped Tue Feb 21 2012

Towards the end of last year, the crew at 4 Pines got into the festive spirit and laid down a very small batch of Christmas Ale. Alas, Christmas came and went with no sign of the beer. It remained firmly locked in its stainless steel prison, closely guarded but knowing its release was imminent. That time has finally come. Since it is now February, the specialty brew has been renamed 'Spiced Ale' and in terms of a description, it pretty much is what it says. In a way, having this Spiced Ale in February ···
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Tapped Mon Jan 9 2012

The first of a what will be a series of releases throughout 2012 from the brewing team at 4 Pines, in which they simultaneously showcase four beers that share a theme. The concept is launched with the Single Hop series, which we wrote about on Crafty late last year. The four beers have been brewed with an identical malt bill (95% Ale, 4% Wheat, 1% Crystal) with the only difference being the choice of hop. The four varieties being used are Amarillo - an aromatic American hop synonymous with APAs and ···
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Tapped Fri Dec 2 2011

Throughout 2012, the brewers at 4 Pines will be releasing a series of single hop beers. However, it appears that they couldn't wait to get started as one has slipped out already. Taking a similar concept to BrewDog's IPA is Dead series and Mikkeller's Single Hop IPA series, the beers will be brewed to the same recipe with the only differing aspect the choice of hop. Kicking off the series is the American hop Amarillo, which has led to a beer described as "light in appearance, with a sweet aroma, ···
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Tapped Thu Oct 6 2011

For their Oktoberfest celebrations, the 4 Pines team has knocked out not one but four different German style beers to be tapped throughout the month. They are:
Pils, a 5.2%, 42 IBU lager featuring a NZ variation on a noble German hop;
Marzen, a 4.8%, 23 IBU lager they describe as "smooth, clean and rather rich with a depth of malt character that is soft complex and elegant";
Dunkelweizen, a 4.7%, 15 IBU take on the dark wheat beer style that's a "spicy, fruity, malty, refreshing" ···
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Tapped Fri Jul 1 2011

A pair of new beers are rolling out of the brewhouse at 4 Pines this weekend as they set about celebrating both Canada Day and Independence Day. First up is the Canuck Canadian Red Ale, designed to be a perfect match with their maple syrup drizzled pancakes with bacon. It comes in at 5.0% and 30IBUs, is unfiltered and has "clean, fresh bitterness complimented by a biscuit-like palate and aroma". Then on Monday, the RyePA (Rye IPA), a beer firmly in the image of the country it's been brewed ···
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The Crafty Pint is an independent online magazine and resource for anyone interested in craft beer in Australia. We bring an honest, old-fashioned journalistic approach to beer's brave new world, telling stories because they're worth telling not because someone is paying us to write them.

Like many of the people who have changed the face of beer in Australia, we believe in authenticity, integrity, enjoyment and love. We hope to play a role in helping good beer, brewed by good people, find its way into the hands of more drinkers.